Thursday, January 17, 2013

Dear "Right Wing Extremist"

Just a check
for common ground here; I’m pro-gun in my own way, but I favor background
checks for buyers, even at gun shows. Also I think that ATF should be allowed
oversight over dealers, including inspection and inventories. Congress banned
these at the behest of the NRA, as they prevent research by the CDC and others
into things like child shootings (in which we lead the world.)

And ‘pro-life;’
I support Planned Parenthood and sex education because I believe that education
and birth control do more than anything to prevent abortions, legal or
otherwise (the nasty kind we had before Roe v Wade.) I wish every child was
wanted. Prisons are full of ones who weren’t.

And does
pro-life include opposing war and capital punishment?

As for
President Obama’s “unwarranted spending:” When the President took office the US
economy was in freefall. My study of history tells me that Keynesian stimulus
brought America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and eased a lot of
human suffering while doing so. I think stimulus spending and (hold your nose)
bank bailouts after the crash of 2008 saved us from another depression. Hell, I
think we should have done more. Millions of Americans didn’t have to lose their
jobs and homes. Banks are awash in cheap cash these days and still aren’t
lending as we had hoped. In the 30s, when banks wouldn’t refinance mortgages or
lend to struggling businesses, Jesse Jones made those loans out of the
treasury, and we turned a profit doing it.

Were you a deficit
hawk when it was Reagan building a 500 ship navy to be mothballed? When George
W. Bush was invading countries on the credit card while he cut tax rates on the
top brackets? Much, if not most of this deficit spending happened under
Republican administrations.

Border
enforcement: You know of course that President Obama has deported more aliens
than any other president.

And
socialism, we are not a socialist country and probably never will be. In our economy,
business is regulated somewhat, by government. This is a balancing act,
necessary if you consider the evils of letting business run the country. Under
such a regime we would still have sweatshops and child labor. I’m more
concerned about corporations co-opting our government than I am about our going
socialist. As for sucking? Norway is a welfare state and they are richer than
we are. Sweden is socialist in many ways, but they have a stable economy, their
people are free, and they are nearly as prosperous as we are. If America were
to become socialist, it would probably be because of abuse and over-reach by
capitalists, who occasionally need to be saved from themselves.

Constitutional
originalism? I think it’s a question of how many founding fathers can dance on
the head of a pin. In practice more a slogan than an ideology, that gets
applied when it fits and discarded when it doesn’t. The Constitution is
inscrutable and incomplete: It was written for the ages. Like scripture, it
should keep scholars bickering for centuries.

And last, the marriage thing. Not all families
look like ours. Many same-sex couples have families and children to take
care of, and without legal recognition have to make extraordinary arrangements
for ordinary things, like picking up the kids at school or making medical
decisions, hospital visits, etc. They are disadvantaged in areas like taxation
and insurance coverage. Gay-bashing legislation in Texas has made such things
even more difficult for people in this position. Sad and unfair.